36 THE "ALMAGEST" OR GREAT BOOK.

Figure 10 explains the cosmographic system of the same astronomer. In the centre we see the Earth, externally surrounded by fire [which is precisely opposite to the truth, according to the fundamental principles of modern geology; but the reader will understand that we are not attempting here to expose the errors of Ptolemaus; we confine ourselves to a description of his system]. Above the Earth spreads the first crystalline heaven, which carries and conveys the Moon. In the second and third crystal heavens the planets Mercury and Venus respectively describe their epicycles. The fourth heaven belongs to the Sun ; wherein it traverses the circle known as the ecliptic. The three last celestial spheres include Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Beyond these planets shines the heaven of the fixed stars. It rotates upon itself from east to west, with an inconceivable rapidity and an incalculable force of impulsion, for it is this which sets in motion all the fabulous machine. Ptolemaus places on the extreme confines of his vast Whole the eternal abode of the blessed. Thrice happy they in having no further cause to concern themselves %I c r ~NT about so terrible a system ; a system far from transparent, notwithstand ing all its crystal! S The treatise in which the Greek SU N X astronomer summed up his labours r _N_U remained for generations in high ( favour with the learned, and especi r F; r ally with the Arabs, whose privilegp and renown it is to have preserved intact the precious deposit of the sciences, when the Europe of the N - twelfth and thirteenth centuries was plunged in the night-shadows of the profoundest ignorance. The Arabs designated the work of Ptolema3us, Almagest-that is, the Great Book, FIG. 1O.-CosMooR&rn ProLE&Us. the Bookpar excellence. [The Greek title runs, M¬ydX ˆóvraEL 'Ao-rpo- vojitac, and the Arabs probably named it ME'yIOTfl, the "Greatest," to distinguish it from another work by Ptolemieus of inferior value. From Megiste, by prefixing the Arabic article al, "the," would come Almagest. It is divided into thirteen books. An admirable edition was issued at Paris, by Halina, in :1816-20. The great geographical treatise of Ptolemaus is entitled Tec.r1'paçbtic Tuçbycn (Ge3grapl1ik Hyphegesis). It is in eight books.] Mohammed, the founder of Islam, endorsed the system of PtoIeinaus as a dogma which God himself had sanctioned. It is, therefore, still accredited and venerated throughout the East. We have, nevertheless, to note one discordance in the universal favour which crowned the cosmography of the Greek. The unbeliever was a king of Castile, whose surname of "The Wise" has been ratified by posterity-Alphonso X., the Wise, or the Astronomer, who lived in the thirteenth century. The complexities